Time for a National Freedom from Fauci Day

I love giving lectures to university students. I also love asking them this question: "In all of human history, how many scientific theories do you estimate have been proven true?"

The answer is zero. The Scientific Method cannot prove any theory true. All it can prove is that a theory has not been proven wrong yet.

You can drop a billion balls that fall exactly as Newton's laws predict. That doesn't prove Newton's correct. If one falls up, Newton is wrong. "That's all there is to it."

It's bad enough when college students don't fundamentally understand the Scientific Method. It's truly frightening when the lead voice on the COVID pandemic response doesn't.

Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that no COVID deaths were recorded in Texas for Sunday, May 16. This is fantastic news for Texas and Texans.

It also shows that emperor Dr. Fauci has no clothes. Dr. Fauci predicted results that were exactly the opposite of what happened in Texas. He wasn't just wrong; he was completely wrong. His ball fell up.

It's long past time to stop listening to Dr. Fauci and his wrong predictions. I declare Sunday, May 16 Texas's "Fauci Freedom Day": the day that Texas officially declared itself free from Fauci's faulty predictions and his complete disregard for the Scientific Method.

First, the facts. When Governor Abbott announced that on March 10, he would end the Texas mask mandate and open businesses 100 percent, on cue, the mainstream propaganda media and the government medical complex predicted impending doom.

Well...yes and no to this line of thinking. The author is correct; scientific theories can be proven wrong, but never proven right. That is true. However, is absolute proof really the standard that we want to use to make decisions in society? We don’t even require absolute proof to convict someone of murder and sentence them to death, merely proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If you disagree with this, then go ahead, jump off a building — maybe Newton is wrong. Maybe you won’t plummet to your death. I know I’m going to bet on Newton, though, and not do this. (And it truly is a shame I have to add this, but such is our society today — I was making a point; I’m not seriously suggesting anyone should actually jump off a building).

The hallmark of good science is a realistic estimate of uncertainty. All predictions and measurements are uncertain. Good scientific models will generate an estimate of that uncertainty. The problem we have as a society is not with the science, but with the interpretation of that science.

There are a few flaws in the way we interpret science. First, as I mentioned above, scientific models always are uncertain. We typically ignore that fact, or even worse, look at the worst-case end of estimates to drive decisions. The latter is what happened with the pandemic. If you recall there were predictive models that showed “as many as 2 million deaths could occur if we don’t take steps to mitigate”. The truth was that this model predicted a few hundred thousand as the most likely outcome (and the observed number might well fall pretty close to the original prediction), but people like Fauci seized on the upper end of the uncertainty range to scare people into following his agenda.

The second flaw we have is that models are typically probabilistic. That is, a model will almost never say something like “2 million people will die”, but rather “there is a 70% chance that between 250000 and 750000 people will die.” Our problem is that most people cannot rationally interpret statements like this. If 200000 or 800000 people die, they’ll say “aha! The model was wrong! Why should we listen to science”. That’s not a valid reaction though. A probability over 50% does not indicate that the outcome will occur, nor does a probability under 50% indicate that it won’t. If I tell you that if you flip three coins, there’s only a 1 in 8 chance that they’ll all turn up heads, I am correct. That doesn’t change if you actually do this and get three heads.

A final flaw we have is that science is descriptive, never prescriptive. Science can only describe what is happening; it NEVER can absolutely tell us the right course of action. It can certainly be used to inform our debates (and should be used that way), but there’s no absolute “right” course of action. Models can say things like “If we close restaurants we will see 10000 fewer deaths” (if you were paying attention above you’d immediately spot a flaw in this statement), but it can’t say “We must close restaurants.” That’s a value judgement. Science doesn’t make value judgements, and anyone (like Fauci) trying to pretend it does is pushing their own agenda, not practicing good science.

Not true at all. You are using the word “scientific” to mean “infalliable”, but the two are not the same. A scientific prediction always carries a level of uncertainty with it. For predictions based on theories that are well established by measurements with low uncertainty, the uncertainty of the prediction is low. To use the example of Newtonian gravity that the author refers to, it is a scientific prediction that if you drop something it will fall. If that’s all Newtonian gravity predicted it would be pretty useless. It also predicts the value of the acceleration vector of the falling object. The uncertainty of that prediction is quite low, low enough that you’d never see the acceleration vector point in the “wrong” direction, that is the object will always fall down, never up (technically that’s true by definition- “down” is defined by the dorection of the local gravitational field).

Similarly predictions about the pandemic were scientific, just much less certain. The problem is that very few people want to hear about uncertainty or are able to properly interpret it. The real question is how much uncertainty can be tolerated before a prediction becomes practically useless. That’s not a scientific question, but a value judgement. The problem with the pandemic lockdowns was not bad science but over reliance on models with large uncertainties. Large uncertainties were unavoidable at the beginning of all this since there was much important information that was not known.

Not true at all. You are using the word “scientific” to mean “infalliable”, but the two are not the same. A scientific prediction always carries a level of uncertainty with it.

I think you completely misunderstood what I wrote. You are essentially agreeing with me. I am not using the word "scientific" to mean "infallible," but rather, imputing that misuse to the general gamut of modern society. Personally, I don't think prediction has anything to do with science, except perhaps in the first stage where hypothesis is formulated on the basis of subjective observation.

In my worldview, science does not produce results. Science is a branch of philosophy that validates subjective observation, which only expedites results. You could obtain every wonderful result that science has supposedly given the human race since its inception without using science at all. It would simply take longer and be a bit more chaotic.

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